Amadeezy
Amadeezy pulled up to scoop me and Alfredo in the glossiest black Cadillac I’d seen in real life. From behind the window, his familiar wide, happy grin somehow shined brighter than the gilded Versace frames and flame-adorned Red Sox hat above it. The bass was booming with his own recent mix for Bodega but, given the scene, the soundtrack in my head was “Stay Fly.” I came of age at Amadeezy’s long-running and legendary trap, chopped n’ screwed, and crunk hip-hop night PVRPLE at the Good Life bar in Downtown Boston. But Alfredo might have heard something a little different, maybe “Searchin’” by 33⅓ Queen, a standard for Amadeezy (né Omar Cabrera) around the time they met in 2008, when Omar was playing commercial house at clubs for a buck. What on the surface seems like a dichotomy is what makes Omar a modern club monolith. He can move all sorts of people—as long as they like an 808 kick. Omar knows this. In fact, he has two monikers, two Soundclouds, even two message signatures for the purpose: Amadeezy aka Bass Boss, the ghetto house groover, and Lil’ Amadeezy aka Lil’ Bass Boss, the trap lord. But while these two personas cover a lot of internet ground, the music Omar produces today confidently combines stops he’s made on his 45-year musical journey if you’re discerning enough to constellate them.
By Sacha Madadian
Photography - Alfredo & Sacha Madadian Art - AlfredoOmar’s command of dichotomous worlds came into sharp focus around the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when he produced at his Caddy’s clip. His quietly self-released underground trap and hip-hop beats had garnered 10s of thousands of streams for years but in 2019, his song “Bass Boss” (released on FTP) opened doors. The Southern bass–influenced track prominently displays the vocal sample from Diana Ross’ “The Boss,” ditching the disco while preserving and amplifying the song’s haunting minor chords—the perfect mood for Amadeezy’s very underground sound. Its success didn’t necessarily fuel Omar’s turbo-charged pandemic production engine: Omar isn’t moved by expectations, and he’d long produced lots of music simply because it’s grounding and fun for him to produce lots of music. But there was no doubt that something different was percolating. He’d been cosigned by Soundcloud and the internet, but now his electronic music was cosigned by the likes of Egyptian Lover, DJ Stingray, DJ Godfather, and Jensen Interceptor. In 2020, around the same time, his Boss Cuts EP (Planetaria) and his Deadly Disco Poison EP (Moveltraxx) were released and spun the world radio stations over. The bass collections, with standouts “Guess Who?” and “New Juke City,” respectively, traverse ghetto house, juke and footwork, and electro, even elements of Memphis horror if you listen.
Fittingly, the opening track to DDP, a BBC Radio 1 fave, is called “Go to Work.” That he did. The top of 2021 brought his highly anticipated Eastside G-Ride EP via International Chrome that sounded so very Omar—an exciting trip through West Coast electro and G-funk. Before, after, and in between, successful tracks, commissioned mixes, and clever, sought-after mixtapes flooded the World Wide Web.
When lockdown lifted and DJ/Producers emerged from the shadows of their studios, Omar, a Bostonian known for sticking close to home, would travel the world—India and then all over Europe—to show off his skills in dance music to the IRL faces of his biggest virtual fans. Music, his spiritual escape (certainly during the pandemic but also, as we’d learn, for years) was now a physical escape—from the dearth of opportunities and limits to artistic potential that Boston provides for creatives, for provocateurs, and for people of color. Omar’s success swelled across oceans in a way that’s impossible across the concrete of his hometown. Each stop on Omar’s path tells a story of personal growth thanks to music. But it also tells a stunting story of Boston—not of the ways Omar represents Boston but of what we can learn from the ways he doesn’t.
A couple weeks ago, Omar drove us to see the Madonna Queen of the Universe National Shrine in East Boston, to look up and down—up at the impossibly tall statue of Mary lighting up the gray skies with striking bronze and copper, and down at the impressive view of our city and its surrounding neighborhoods, the only home Omar has ever known. We were shooting some new promo photos ahead of another European tour, and he offered this as one of his favorite spots. Alfredo and I had never been, and none of us are religious, but it was hard not to feel something in a space so gilded and grand. The flicks are sick. At the time it was just fun to watch Omar pose reluctantly, refusing to smile despite his usually light-hearted nature, in front of all the icons of the court. But now sitting with our conversation, the photos are eerily symbolic—symbolic of Amadeezy’s Boston Ascension.
Omar was born in Mattapan, a southern neighborhood of Boston, to a Filipino mother and Cuban father. He was the second child after his brother Mark. Throughout the eight hours we hung out with Omar in East Boston, a constant of the conversation was Mark. Omar doesn’t go 10 minutes without citing him as an inspiration, not just for his music but for all the stages of his cultural development—skating and graffiti writing to going to hardcore punk shows in his young teen years in the late 80s when the genre boomed in Boston with a distinct style and look (think: SS Decontrol). Mark had an innate gift for finding cool shit before the internet did that for you. “Mark is sort of like my secret weapon. He’s such a finger-on-the-pulse kind of guy. Being from the era where we’re from—you had to search things out. He was really good at that then without the internet so now he’s like a wizard.”
Eventually, the Boston punk scene Mark introduced Omar to changed: Its sound became more New York and its scene more jock and more violent, driving Omar to start occupying new foundational spaces. Once nursery-rhyme rapping of the 80s was out, hip-hop consumed a lot of Omar’s youth headspace. And, like a strong faction of Boston hardcore listeners, Omar and Mark started raving. He didn’t totally get it at first, but, ‘“[The music] was pretty sick,” he says. “It was a lot of that happy hardcore, breakbeat rave. That early The Prodigy–sounding stuff. The real ravey old breaks from the 90s. Tons of UK stuff.” The sample-and-break-heavy sounds made sense for a hip-hop head and foreshadowed a merging of roads that would drive through Amadeezy’s musical journey. We spoke to Mark to connect the dots: “We were friends with lots of ravers and house and techno DJs back in the 90s. Although we identified more with hip-hop, we would just go to raves for something to do. We paid attention and listened. I would make copies of mixes I liked that circulated through our rave friends. It was pretty hard to avoid dance culture at that time in Boston. That was enough to make a lasting impression.”
So far, this coming-of-age story might feel relatable enough to certain 80s and 90s kids in any city—these scenes are all countercultures. “It was in those small communities, like punk rock and graffiti and all those places, where the misfits of every race came together,” Omar laughs. But still, he felt like no scene—punk once it turned jock, hip-hop with its heavy emphasis on East Coast underground and boom bap around these parts, and the rave scene, which would eventually creep into commercial and was just so damn white—fully embraced him. “But there were misfits among the misfits,” he explains. “I was a misfit among the misfits. There are always going to be people that are a part of counterculture and then there are always going to be people who are a part of that counterculture but they’re not following in the footsteps of the norms of that small [group].”
With his toes dipped into electric waters, Omar would find house music by going to The Loft (Boston) around 16 or 17, and it was a transformative experience. There was an upstairs rave crowd (fur and platform boots and all), but downstairs housed something Omar hadn’t seen: All ages of people, mostly all Black and Latino, coming, often straight from work, to groove, sweat, feel, battle dance. What was created at The Loft by, notably, our local legend DJ Bruno and, of course, Armand van Helden, was a real underground place, a real soulful place—and yet still a segregated place in some ways. White suburban kids went straight to their rave floor and everyone else enjoyed a safe space downstairs, the only interaction in the bathroom.
“I was a misfit among the misfits. There are always going to be people that are a part of counterculture and then there are always going to be people who are a part of that counterculture but they’re not following in the footsteps of the norms of that small [group].”
And so, even those rare special spaces for escape in Boston remind that when you exit their doors, the city’s truth is as cold as the weather: that being a misfit often means not being white. Even when you find your brethren, participation in subcultural activities is outweighed by the responsibilities of living in an immigrant, and in Omar’s case, single-parent household. They’re outweighed by dealing with trauma. And they’re outweighed by needing to get money.
When music truly saves, rather than simply lifts from listlessness, the tone isn’t as joyful as the Lil’ Louis & the World song. Eventually, when Omar was 19, Mark would let him use a set of turntables and a mixer—the first of many times music would save him. Their mom, whom Omar lived with, had passed away; he was alone and needed something to keep him out of very real trouble. “I was never really that good at graffiti, or skateboarding, or BMXing, and I knew instantly that it was something I was really good at. And it was the one thing I could get into as a kid that kept my attention.” The turntables were a real gift. “I had a part time job and was taking courses in junior college,” Mark retells. “So O was basically on them all day and night every day. I couldn’t even practice myself because when I got home he’d just show me all the tricks and mixes he learned mimicking battle DJ VHS tapes. It was cool to see him have something of his own that he was naturally good at. At some point without saying, I gave him the tables but I think he knew they were already his from the get.”
Omar impressed in scratch and DJ battles under the name Dr. Claw. “[Music] gave me direction and in a lot of ways it saved my life. It’s not something I take for granted as far as giving me purpose, or giving me something to put my energy into. Because I was going nowhere quick when I got into music.”
But as much as the hobby was a distraction from Omar’s young adult turn, whether because of the streets or school, it didn’t always stick. Repeatedly, Omar would lose music, go wayward, and come back and find his way again. If you truly know Boston—that is, if you’ve lived here without the shelter of its town-like enclaves—Omar’s story isn’t surprising. Boston is a very depressed city when you’re not privileged. It’s not uncommon to search for an escape, hence the city’s current raging opiate problem. For some it’s drugs, for some it’s art or music—for the lucky ones, the talented ones, the latter can eventually outweigh the former. And Omar is very very talented. Twenty-five years later, music remains Omar’s biggest motivator to maintain routine, create structure, and calm anxious energy.
It wasn’t until 2005, when Omar was 28, that music began to hold some permanence. A friend asked for DJ lessons and in the process of teaching her, Omar remembered that he had the now-dusty turntables and vinyl for a reason. There was a boredom to turning his life around, to distancing himself from the legal system. He lacked direction and he needed money. “I got into exercising, I thought about joining the army. I was so lost. I didn’t know what my purpose was. There was a point when I was going to Emerson [College] where I was doing film and TV/video stuff, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to pursue this stuff—I’m not a rich kid. I can’t just up and move to New York or LA. Also having to deal with having lost my mom at a young age, and all the other people I’d lost, the trauma of being poor—the things that most young minority men have to go through. I had to grow up quick.”
So he started coming back to the decks and playing clubs as a side gig for money—why not make the hustle something he enjoyed and was good at? As the gigs required, Omar played some variation of open format or big room house in (now-closed) clubs across the city, from the tiny student-serving OM Lounge in Harvard Square to the Enormous Room in Central Square, Cambridge and the 18+ after-hours club Rise in Downtown Boston.
“[Music] gave me direction and in a lot of ways it saved my life. It’s not something I take for granted as far as giving me purpose, or giving me something to put my energy into. Because I was going nowhere quick when I got into music.”
Being any kind of electronic music fan made playing for crowds insufferable by the late aughts. Tech house was popular, but so was a rise in what was at best commercial house and at worse EDM. Plus, underlying this whitewashing of dance music were the repressive contradictions facing those using club DJing as a second income stream in Boston: Most clubs had dress codes that blatantly attempted to keep out a certain person. That person certainly wasn’t white, and that person certainly looked a lot like Omar. The dehumanizing historical trope is ever-real here: You’re welcome if you can entertain. “I never wanted to go to those places. I’m just not one of those people, and I always knew that. You know from the time you’re a kid who your people are. And it’s funny, because then I became the DJ at those clubs, which is really weird. I [just] needed the money. It’s the one thing I could do outside of my 9-to-5.” If it’s not for music, a lot of doors literally don’t open for Boston’s most talented.
Interestingly enough, Omar told this part of his story over splashes of birria broth and slurps of unctuous tripe-filled menudo at a tight Mexican restaurant in Eastie run by a family from Jalisco. We—two Latinos and an ambiguous Middle Eastern woman—for a rare moment didn’t look out of place in Boston. But to a similar tune, Alfredo expanded with his own experience. “When I came to Boston, there was a fear of going out. When people wanted to go to things, I was like, ‘oh, I don’t think they’re gonna let me in’ just based on whatever the fuck I was wearing. I felt intimidated to go to places sometimes.”
One window Omar’s club experience opened for him, however, was a fleeting curiosity about the place that would eventually give him celebrity. Omar served large populations of Cambridge’s international students at OM. “Even though I had never been to Europe, I was starting to understand how much more important dance music is to them than it is to us. They thought I was incredible [laughs], because they weren’t used to people knowing that music here. They were shocked when I would play things that I knew were hits over there. I remember playing ‘Drop the Pressure, ‘Exceeder’ by Mason—that song’s so sick, that was a big one in Europe—playing the Da-Hool when it came out. I didn’t have any plans, but I was starting to get intrigued with Europe. I thought: Something’s going on there that I might want to check out some time.”
At the time on the production side, Omar, under the moniker Loopus Amadeus, was making tech house—falling into it and subsequently falling out of it because of its popularity. The music had tons of promise—Omar’s productions have long been picked up by institutions like BBC Radio 1—but it didn’t hold his attention, nor did the scene. “When cooler electronic music began to wane and was replaced by EDM, I knew immediately that that was not for me. It made me not want to produce [electronic] music and it made me not want to play that music. There was no space for me in this. I’ll be misunderstood no matter what.”
One place Omar didn’t feel misunderstood: among the more diverse hip-hop crowd. He grew tired of being a commercial DJ, he craved a real underground, he craved the misfits, and he craved playing the music he never stopped loving. Everything clicked one evening at a house night: Unlike in other major cities, the scene of people vocal about electronic music had become largely white, the vibe at The Loft long lost. “You go somewhere and it looks like every guy there combed their hair with a pork chop when they walked in the door. You’re like, damn, why is everyone’s hair so oily? My hair is too dry for that. I wore a hat. You’re already a misfit among the misfits. You know? [House music] wasn’t mainstream stuff in Boston. The event that turned me off straddled that line of commercial tech house. [And so] I made my calculations of who the fans were for that type of music through that experience. That was the kind of music that you listen to, like, on a boat. I already knew about deep house, classic Chicago house, about ghetto house—I was already playing that stuff. The tech house thing, I don’t know how I ended up there. It was the ‘It’ thing.”
That was just one unfortunate party, but it was the moment that would again save Omar—this time not from the streets, but from navigating within a tiny Boston electronic box that his artistic vision was far too grand to occupy. In 2012, the antidote to Omar’s (now Amadeezy’s) disillusionment was PVRPLE, the trap night he started with a group of DJs and promoters that similarly felt left out of the music they loved. Collaborator DJ Knife echoed, “At the time, it was the EDM era and a lot of clubs in Boston weren’t letting us play rap music. So we wanted to go the completely opposite way. Omar and I literally had little to no opportunities to play the music we liked out in public.”
Omar’s devotion was never to the East Coast hip-hop consensus. Even in the 90s, while New Englanders were bumping Edo. G & Da Bulldogs and The Almighty RSO, Omar was drawn to West Coast G-funk, found simply through his digging, watching Rap City, and picking what he liked. And as soon as he learned about Southern music, he liked it. A friend from high school who moved to Texas sent Omar chopped n’ screw tapes, and they were a gateway to regional rap styles outside of New York East Coast. He loved elements of Memphis, crunk, hyphy, of course Miami Bass—much like his knowledge of electronic music, his tastes in hip-hop were always a sonic ticket out of Boston. And trap was first class; despite its huge popularity today, it was truly underground at the time.
PVRPLE pretty quickly transcended party to become cultural phenomenon. With strong branding (a memorable name dreamed up by Mark. an in-your-face aesthetic. first-rate DJs and guests, and eventually styrofoam party cups and grape-colored mascots thanks to the affable DJ Knife), the team built a fully packed night around a new-to-many underground rap genre. But the measure of their success was also the demographics they brought together. PVRPLE was the very opposite of those segregated rooms at Boston clubs. The crowd was Black—but it was also white and everything else. The people were young trendspotters—but they were also old and open-minded. The party marked a period when the Good Life bar was the only club downtown without a dress code and that openly rallied the city’s marginalized communities. In addition to hit hip-hop, dancehall, and Afrobeat party A Lil’ Louder, global dance music night Picó Picante, and even our underground dance night Social Studies, PVRPLE redefined Good Life, opening it as a destination for people of color and creatives.
And like it was a healthy escape for Omar, PVRPLE was an escape for these communities that came to the party. Turn up music to tune out their own complex realities. “I’ve heard some people say some amazing things about that night. I remember I saw a kid, he put up a tweet, ‘If every night was like PVRPLE there would be no racism,’ because the night was so mixed.” Michael Watts, used to playing for Black crowds in Houston, was shocked by the floor the night he headlined, proclaiming on the mic, “Tonight, nobody’s black or white. Everybody’s Purple!” The place went insane.
PVRPLE lasted for 10 years. Paused by the pandemic, the crew celebrated one last hurrah last spring. We were there, and it was a nostalgic joy—the one thing to bring the club’s OGs and the new generation of Good Life goers and Amadeezy fans together after nightlife got back on its feet. Nothing had changed on the dance floor—surrounding a raucous pit were the kids throwing dice, the cool clubgoers swagging with their drinks in styrofoam cups, and the trap heads spitting along with every track. Ten years later, PVRPLE people were still flying high.
And Omar was high: The night was a reminder of not only what PVRPLE was for the people but what PVRPLE was for him. The party reinvigorated his passion, and it finally gave him the space to unite a bunch of misfits-among-the-misfits and amplify how cool they were.
Meanwhile, with this clarity, Omar’s life was free to move in positive lockstep. Music was never something Omar had the inclination to pursue with much intention because “you’re not going to make money in Boston doing cool things.” If you don’t have privilege, you can’t threaten your income by distracting from your hustle with music if the city doesn’t appreciate that kind of creativity.
“Ten years ago. . . I wasn’t secure financially. The cornerstone of it all is having financial security and stability for me. That’s why I never pursued it. There was no time for it. I needed to make money. DJing was just a fairly stable second income. I always understood that there was a glass ceiling for being that local DJ guy.” In the five years between 2013 and 2018 when Omar wasn’t releasing music, he was focusing on his career and reaching the maturity required to create structure around his art. And now he does very well for himself, financially (the flash is modest but not a front) and creatively. “The average creative—you have to have some form of self-discipline. You might not get that if you haven’t worked for other people. You have to make the time, and you have to be disciplined about it. You have to set up a good structure.”
A day for Omar today: He wakes up at 5 a.m. and goes for a run. He works his stable 9-to-5. He might eat, it’s not clear, but he without fail works on music for a solid 6 hours in a room with him, his laptop, his speakers, a midi keyboard, and an overflowing barrel of empty Dunkin’ ice coffees. Discipline and attention to structure are now two of the most marked qualities facilitating his fun: an almost child-like wonderment with his producing and experimenting with an enormous bank of ideas. They put Omar in a comfortable place to create dance music with more intention. Now, no matter where the electronic zeitgeist goes, he won’t need to turn away; he has the confidence to control his own narrative.
The first new track he dropped with this mentality was a Miami bass remix of Skinny Pimp’s “Bend Ya Back.” And it went off. Way off. Fifty-three thousand streams off. And it began to hint at the poetic direction his music was going—Omar, knowingly or not, was taking all his experiences in music and setting them to an infectious 808 kickdrum. Maybe it was surprising if you know Omar from PVRPLE and hip-hop mixes, but as Mark said, even their time raving as mere teens opened their mind to music’s possibilities. “[In the] early 2000s Hollertronix releases the infamous genre-bending mixtape Never Scared that incorporated so many styles of music we were into. Changed the whole game. I made Omar listen to it and that broke a lot of mental barriers for us. In Boston for some people you pick a lane and stay in it. To go outside that lane is unheard of. I feel O got a lot of flack for playing / making dance music and also rap from both sides. I think he always knew he had tapped into something bigger.”
Boston-based producer, DJ, rave archivist and owner of 8205 Recordings, Pete Cassin (Dev/Null) also holds that Omar’s years of diverse musical experiences are key to his success. “Omar definitely had the ‘magic ingredient’ in my mind: a rich music background with exposure to a variety of cool styles over an extended period of time. In my opinion, the best tunes get made not from people who are sonically isolated and myopically focused on one particular sound, but by those who have a rich set of influences to pull from beyond the precise style(s) of music they make. That fits Omar to a T. That being said, it’s certainly never a given that people will have the drive, or talent, to really utilize those influences and synthesize them into something fresh, but Omar has certainly accomplished that.”
In 2019, something fresh was a hit with “Bass Boss,” and it became more than a song but a lifestyle—Omar’s chance to create an eponymous alter ego, to be the antihero for an audience of online misfits who were searching the internet for sound serotonin just like he does. His positive reclamation of the misfit persona in part draws influence from Lil’ B, who similarly turned an insult into his own positive alter ego, the Based God. “There’s no line between the Based God and the people. And that’s where I wanted to be. The Boss’ job is to make sure at the end of the day that everybody’s happy, and to inspire people to work hard. I think people relate better to people they can trust. The positivity. That’s not fake. It’s real DIY. Everything I do is genuine, it’s honest, the music I make is honest.”
The other reason he’s the Bass Boss: Omar delivers you hard-hitting 808s from the perspective of a veteran with a youthful, relatable spirit that resonates with his fans. Sure, the music has trap influences, but it’s all to a soundtrack of house, Miami bass, techno that only someone studying this music for a very long time could adeptly and authentically weave together. “That’s why I’m the Bass Boss, because I realize people fucking love the 808 kickdrum. That shit’s not going anywhere. The one thing that I always knew about trap music over classic hip-hop is, yeah, you can connect to the lyricism in hip-hop and the beat can be very—almost pensive—but you don’t physically feel the music the way you feel trap music. That 808 hits and you feel that shit. It hits deep. You’re gonna feel my music.” Now, anywhere Omar travels, the people refer to him as Bass Boss. “People scream that at me! They don’t call me Amadeezy.”
“It’s crazy to me that people are sort of saying that I’m a contemporary pioneer of ghetto tech and ghetto house, because there’s definitely been a resurgence of that kind of music in the past few years. I don’t claim those sounds, because that’s regional music to me, but obviously that music influences mine. But that’s what I’m getting thrown at me.”
In a world where faster, harder tracks are ruling the clubs, Omar’s music stands out from the 135 BPM+ sound crowd with his tracks’ maturity. Unlike many in the space, he’s lived this music before, he’s played this music before; every element is something borrowed that he has a specific experience with. It’s authentic and therefore dripping with intrigue for those more removed from these cultures. Every day Omar’s tagged in Instagram stories from DJs spinning the music in places he’s never heard of.
The architects of the sound in this country have noticed too. “That’s huge to me, even DJ Godfather hitting me up and saying, ‘yo, I really fuck with your music, you sound like you’re from Detroit.’ ‘Oh, well, I’m not, I’m from Boston, and I’ve been listening to you for years and known your music since the 2000s.’ They’re masters at what they do, so I know it’s good.”
In addition to receiving praise from the pioneers, you know you’ve made it when you’ve become the subject of YouTube tutorials; bedroom beatmakers try to decode the “Amadeezy-type beat.” I asked if it feels wild to represent a new genre of his own. “It’s crazy to me that people are sort of saying that I’m a contemporary pioneer of ghetto tech and ghetto house, because there’s definitely been a resurgence of that kind of music in the past few years. I don’t claim those sounds, because that’s regional music to me, but obviously that music influences mine. But that’s what I’m getting thrown at me.” And the tutorials? “They’d be shocked to see it’s probably a lot more simple than they think. There’s not a lot of technique behind it. It’s just raw.”
The number of productions, remixes, mixes, and mixtapes Omar created during the pandemic was unbelievable (so unbelievable, we put them on a graphic; see below). The internet allowed him to escape the creative confines of Boston without leaving his studio; now, despite calling himself an antistar, he’s filling airplane hangers abroad and headlining raves from Austin to L.A. But he’s one of our very favorite Social Studies guests, and I can’t help but wonder what it feels like to receive less attention where he actually makes the music. “When I first started making this music, I knew who the audience would be for it. I mean, I didn’t know it was going to be that well received in India or in Europe. But I was doing it for the internet. There wasn’t any part of it that was ever thinking about garnering popular attention here. I was making music for people like me that are looking for people like me [laughs]. If I was more invested in garnering popularity here, I would have pursued something else, another type of music, maybe, that I knew was part of the local music culture. I represent the city, because I’m from here but my music—there’s nothing regional about it.”
Pete gives a more objective perspective on garnering attention proportionate to talent on the local level. “I think when it comes to supporting people in a local scene, most people are primarily focused on themself. . .There’s very, VERY little time devoted to ‘Who is the best DJ in my city and what can I do to signal boost them?’ People are more interested in booking special headliners from out-of-state/country. This happens everywhere pretty much, so it’s no surprise that Omar gets overlooked by crews who have a stable ‘inner circle’ of DJs/friends who help each other with parties. Omar doesn’t put any effort into kissing people’s asses, and doesn’t go begging for small-fry local bookings. He puts that effort into making more tunes and more mixes, which end up getting him far more valuable attention outside his hometown.”
That said, Omar is nominated for a Boston Music Award this year. And the recognition fills him with gratitude like a fan asking for a signed record in Paris or inclusion in a visible Boys Noize mix might. “I’m always grateful for anybody who enjoys my music or appreciates it or gives it any attention. At the end of the day I’m just grateful that those people know who I am. I just do it for fun. It’s cool that people would take what I do serious. That’s the part of it that’s most personal to me—the amount of people that reach out and tell you they enjoy your music. I never even thought people would care.”
There are two other crews in Boston that fully embrace the Bass Boss, Pole Postion and Clear the Floor. They’re young, they’re in-tune, they’re free-spirited, and they’re fucking shit up with a mentality not that different from Omar’s. They rave for themselves and they rave for marginalized communities that don’t feel they have a space of their own in club culture. Chelita, an up-and-coming DJ with a hard-hitting style, has a real affinity for Amadeezy. I asked her what resonates and the affinity is pure: “Omar’s music reminds me of growing up in Miami. I’m drawn to it because Amadeezy highlights the classic sounds of dance music while also using inspiration from today’s music. He DJs and produces simply because he loves doing it. It’s about dancing and the music, not the other stuff that comes with it. That’s what I respect about him, he’s true to the bass. Amadeezy really is the Bass Boss.”
Omar’s raw authenticity resonates in the places where authenticity matters: in curious corners of the internet, in international scenes of DJs who’ll play anything new and hot, with open-minded new generations learning from those before them, and with the more rare factions of dance music heads with the trained ear to automatically hear that Omar’s stuff is special. For Omar, it doesn’t make sense to seek validation beyond those places—not in Boston, not among the dance or hip-hop majorities, not among the gatekeepers. “My relationship is different than someone who’s pursuing it just for external validation. Most people go outward; I’m the opposite, I always go in. I did it alone for so long without getting any attention for it. External validation didn’t matter for me.”
That’s why he embraces the spirit of the young and passionate. “I’ve always been someone who is from the old school but has a point of view that is more in line with what’s contemporary. I think your job as a musician or a DJ is to sort of take a temperature for what’s cool and to present your art form in a way that’s relevant to what resonates with people to some degree. Without new music, the industry would die.”
What’s keeping him relevant next? He has a very “freaky” EP (can you catch a track in this mix?) set to drop imminently, a quickly forthcoming hard house EP on L.A.’s Evar Records, and a record releasing on International Chrome. After that, he wants to get to work on a full-length album, with all live rappers and vocalists. His expectations beyond those are modest as always, but his brother was vocal about other ideas. “[I see him with] at some point his own label. He’s got a good ear for tracks and finding talented bedroom producers with little to no exposure. It’s usually these producers who have the stand out tracks too. Practically has a roster already. I’ve been planting the seed in his head. He’s been self releasing anyway, it wouldn’t be too much of a jump.”
Omar blasted some to-be-released tracks for us in his car before dropping us off. They, unsurprisingly, blew me (and the neighborhood and my eardrum) away. I left the Cadillac with a pulsing ear that lingered a couple days, a memory of a beautiful day with the Boss. Whenever the projects drop, I can assure you firsthand, they will bring the bass wherever in the world they’re rinsed.
